Sir, – Citing compelling data, Fintan O’Toole makes the point that necessary reductions in harmful emissions cannot be equally distributed across society (“Well-off Irish people do the most climate damage and must pay the price”, Opinion & Analysis, February 11th). His summary statement that “excessive wealth produces excessive consumption, which in turn creates excessive carbon emissions” is not necessarily true, though.
Association is not causation, and the opposite may be the case.
This potentially more problematic interpretation is that high-income jobs, or lifestyles, require the types of activity that generate lots of carbon dioxide.
Travelling on behalf of the multinational corporation that employs you, or to its American headquarters, getting to their various sites or outlets around the country, or working late at the office to meet deadlines while communicating with a team in various locations – all such activities generate abundant emissions.
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People running businesses travel to sound out products they may import, or make deals with suppliers, they run fleets of delivery vehicles and then finally employ the “ordinary people” whose low-emission patterns Fintan O’Toole praises.
The number who travel for pleasure by private jet is very low indeed, and that practice is probably indefensible. But most people I know who generate massive carbon footprints are representing growing companies, they board “red-eye” flights on Monday mornings to yield the corporate taxes we rely on and so ultimately provide jobs for rank-and-file workers.
On a small island nation with a globalised economy, this will be difficult to change. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
Sir, – I’m responding to Fintan O’Toole’s column in which he makes the case that we must all reduce our consumption if Ireland is to meet its carbon reduction targets, and that the wealthy especially must reduce their consumption.
His being right won’t get us anywhere. Writing long lists of other people who need to forgo indulgences won’t get us anywhere.
The only way we can change what we do, or make other people change what they do, is make it easy to change.
Wholesale massive electrification of everything is the easiest way to make the necessary changes easy for everybody. Electricity can be generated in a carbon-neutral way. Virtually all the modern conveniences of life can be powered through electricity. If people switched to electrical home heating and cooking and electric cars, they would not notice much of a change in how they live but their impact on the environment would depend on how that energy was produced (something the Government and the electricity companies can worry about for them).
There is overwhelming passive agreement and acceptance of the need to reduce our impact on the environment but expecting people to go without to make this happen is profoundly unrealistic. It must be made easy to be good because no one will sign up for hairshirts and hardship. – Yours, etc,
ANDREW JORGENSEN,
Artane,
Dublin 5.
Sir, – Fintan O’Toole, in analysing the imbalance in sources of emissions, shines a timely light on an economic system that not only exacerbates social inequality but also accelerates climate breakdown. The data is damning, and getting worse, as evidenced by the recent Oxfam report on inequality. However, your columnist neglects to take his analysis to its logical conclusion, ie that the root cause of all of our ills is capitalism, and in particular the current ideological form of capitalism with GDP growth at its heart.
Climate breakdown and social inequality are but two symptoms of our current malaise, the others being the biodiversity crisis, plastic pollution, ocean acidification and the erosion of global democracy by an unelected elite. Restoring stability to atmospheric carbon levels requires both a reduction in emissions but also an increase in absorption through natural cycles. This is not possible if we persist in pushing GDP growth, even with renewable energy at its core. Our issues are more than just about carbon emissions, it’s about the accelerating extraction of natural resources to feed an economy of needless consumption. In doing so we destroy those natural systems which are key to absorbing the excess carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.
Much of this consumption is fuelling the accumulation of excess wealth by individuals known to us all.
To make matters worse the billionaire class are having a malignant influence on global democracy, and are undermining the mechanisms that are critical to ordinary citizens developing a more just and sustainable world.
Addressing these issues, and reversing the erosion of the social dividend that has occurred in the last 40 years, is critical to achieving both political and ecological stability going forward. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Blackrock,
Cork.